Japan’s former PM and current LDP leader Shinzo Abe has stunned many Japanese with talk of building even more nuclear power plants, even as parts of the nation remain radioactive wastelands – though he very reassuringly talks of building them using the “latest technology” in “extremely safe” locations.

Ex-PM Abe, now the leader of the LDP in opposition and set to become PM should the LDP manage to win the upcoming general election, amazed even some of his staunch supporters in a recent interview with his continued insistence on promoting nuclear power in quake and lately radiation ravaged Japan.

After affirming that he would do his best to introduce more renewables, he also affirmed his continued support for more nuclear reactors:

“Incorporating the latest technology, we should be considering how we can build new reactors in extremely safe locations”

He did however still dodge the question of whether existing reactors should be restarted:

“This should be determined by a government comprised of representatives the people have chosen.”

The current government’s policy is to abolish nuclear power from Japan’s energy mix over some decades, although despite this work on some new reactors is apparently still going ahead.

Most of Japan’s political parties have either vowed to abandon nuclear power or given vague assurances that they will at least not let any more be built and allow the attrition of elderly plants to take its course.

Public opinion appears to be overwhelmingly in favour of abandoning nuclear power completely, with those brazen enough to still promote it being limited to crazed online right-wingers and stooges of the nuclear power industry (apparently including much of the LDP, which oversaw their construction in the first place).

Abe’s other vote-grubbing antics include various displays of rabid patriotism – including a recent press conference in which he tactfully dismissed the comfort women issue as “made up in a fraudster’s book and circulated by the Japanese media” and repeated his view that “there was no element of compulsion involved.”

Whilst his nationalist grandstanding has proven popular amongst creepy online extremists, even many of them baulk at more fault-straddling reactors huddled along Japan’s coastlines in the path of regular tsunami:

“First make an extremely safe location!”

“What is wrong with this guy! Does he intend to completely ruin Japan!?”

“The LDP has gone right back to its old ways of serving vested interests.”

“At least this is better than continuing to use the old ones…”

“They haven’t even done anything about Fukushima’s yet.”

“He’s just going to keep all the old dangerously situated ones running.”

“The problems happened with maintaining the plants. No matter what technology you employ, you still have to maintain proper inspections!”

“It has more to do with people than technology. You cannot expect their management to take real responsibility for the plants unless they are at least threatened with jail when they screw up.”

“Use all the technology you want, the problem is when you have an outfit like TEPCO managing it all.”

“Just build them on Okinawa where there are no quakes…”

“Try the Senkaku isles.”

“Why do they have to keep building the damn things right by the coast?”

“They need lots of water for cooling and apparently they cannot find any suitably large rivers to use in Japan, as they do in most other countries.”

“There is no extremely safe location in all Japan. The entire landmass is a severe earthquake risk compared to the US or EU.”

“I don’t oppose nuclear power, but the policy of building them in a place like Japan is utter insanity.”

“This guy is a total moron. At this time, he proposes making more of the things!?”

“It doesn’t matter though – there is no way such projects will ever overcome local opposition now.”

“The LDP is totally in thrall to the nuclear power lobby so it should not surprise anyone who votes for them that they fully intend to build more of them.”

“Abe is a joke – live in the most seismically active nation on the planet and build more of them and another defect will just cause one to explode down the line. He’s finished.”

“Abe is done with. Being a patriot doesn’t somehow mean you have to support nuclear power.”

“Why do the LDP love nuclear reactors so hard?”

“They still take so much in donations from the nuclear power companies there is really no hope for them now.”

If they’d but sacrifice a few onsen we could all have geothermal power now…”

“Use the latest technology – to make better fossil fuel plants. Invest in reducing the pollution and fuel requirements, not in nuclear plants.”

“They ignored the risk until now and now they expect anyone to believe them when it comes to safety?”

“There is no safe place for these things. See if Abe lets them build one in his back garden.”

“Just make them build it in Tokyo Bay and see how they like it then.”

“Safe nuclear power is a delusion. The risk may be small, but that is not the same thing as it being safe. They haven’t properly engineered any of the existing plants for high earthquake resistance and if they did the cost would be astronomical.”

Japan has no choice, maybe if they had upgraded the reactors and shut down old ones they would have not had the problem they did. Either way been oil and coal dependent is going to lead to a Japan weak and unable to defend it self if the time comes. So unless Japan is full of coal and Oil that is easy to get to they guy has more brains than most.

Re that “nuclear wasteland” remark: there are plenty of urban areas in the world which sit on top of natural sources of radiation many times stronger than what is found in Fukushima at the moment, and without anyone getting health problems from it.

Yet people living on those areas get by without problems – no noticeably higher cancer rates or other issues reported.

In fact I happen to have visited one of those places – the beach of Guarapari in Brazil – many times during my youth, and can attest that neither I nor anyone I know have ever had any health problems due to that, even though its background radiation is as high as twice what is found at Fukushima now.

Personally I think that Abe is right – nuclear energy is the way to go – but if you do disagree, at least take the time to get your facts straight.

Nuclear power is cleaner than most people think.
Only problem with nuke plants is the nuclear waste.

Finland still builds more nuclear plants so i don’t really see problem with japan building some more. they should make their plants superquake proof though. I belive civilians don’t want another nuclear fallout to occur.

Abe looks like a Japanese Ronald Reagan. I wonder if he’s also suffering from Alzheimers.

Not knocking Nuclear Power. The dumbest thing Oregonians (well, North-Westerners really) ever did was force the shut-down of Trojan, yet do shit about the nuclear & biological depots a hundred or so miles to the east. But show me a safe region on a VOLCANIC ISLAND CHAIN known for extreme earthquakes, storms, etc. Seriously, show me such a safe region in Japan.

Considering where the current plants are/were built…Japan was just ASKING for a disaster. Or for Godzilla to stop by and fart.

Nuclear reactor’s is the future for our society endless hunger for energy. Gas and oil are diminishing products that takes years for it to be replenish because it’s mostly dead carcasses of either plant or animals.

Solar power isn’t ready yet to take on our hungry 1st world country as it still suffers from efficiency, the lack of space for it, and it’s still expensive. Off-shore wind mills is not economically suffice because: 1) building a station off-shore is really expensive; 2) paying the off-shore worker’s is similar to paying off-shore oil riggers (approx. $200k). Underwater current mills would decay because its metal and slaughtering marine species. Windmill on land has a lot of complaints mostly because its appearance and causing a slaughter of avian species.

Owning either solar panel or a windmill can be a problem too. If you were to generate a certain amount of electricity here in the US, you will be taxed in the same fashion as the companies who are producing energies. Let’s not forget the fact that most consumer’s don’t have the kind of budget to invest it even if they wanted to.

Sending a satellite into Space to obtain certain energy such as solar energy or Helium-3 (from either the Moon or nearby asteroids) will be too expensive to invest in.

There’s a lot of issues that needs to be sorted out but I honestly believe going with nuclear energy is far better than destroying our environment to obtain resources. Not to mention we still don’t have a space ship that can allow us to wrap through wormholes or travel at the speed of light without killing us to settle on a new planet.

>>Windmill on land has a lot of complaints mostly because its appearance and causing a slaughter of avian species.

Ah, the infamous “danish windmills are slaughering birds!” argument.

It’s totally true that 30,000 birds are killed per year from their wind turbines, which are provding 9% of their electricity.

It’s totally true also that traffic kills 1,000,000 birds per year in the same country.

But anon, people need cars!
People need cats too? Or at least they need them to go out of houses?
Because cats do a slaughter of birds that put Stalin to shame. Some 55,000,000 per year just in England, more or less of a bird per year per person.

Also, rust argument on tidla power is shit. We don’t harness much of it, true, but the experiments like that artificial pool in France are going on from… I dunno? 70-80s?

If it wasn’t for bad maintains, bad training, slow and stupid (instead of throwing cable on surface in couple of hours, they builded transmission towers whole _week_ from scratch) decisions, and etc, we would never know about place called “Fukushima”.

The purpose of Nuclear reactors is to create the weapons of genocide, nuclear bombs. Frankly, look up a “Thorium” reactor, there are LOTS of technologies nuclear scientists have worked out that are far less dangerous and CAN NOT be used to make nuclear bomb material, but no one uses them.

Furthermore, as per the New World Order Globalist Banker fascist state, they always let “Industry” make these things. The usual sell it to the people is that “Private Industry” is somehow better than government. Except they need to build it from the ground up, massive insurance in case of loss, massive insurance in case of accident and “Damage caps” that even cover grotesque incompetence and then more money to pay the employees wages. Power goes UP in price and the CEOs pay and pay and pay themselves while doing NOTHING to grow their business…

And I’d bet that Japan’s Nuclear reactors DID have quite enough public funds to have upgraded them over the years so this weather problem would have been a nuisance (shut down, no power for a few weeks) not a catastrophe. And I’m sure that there are some figures at the top of the shit-pile that had multi million dollar salaries. Oh, perhaps there’s a figurehead, but there has to be some “Investors” or whatever that BLED millions, billions from the project for no reason other than personal profit.

I don’t claim to know this directly, this is just “one man’s opinion” but I do notice how much “Inspiration” Japan has from the USA so it’s hard NOT to accept this for me.

Again, IMO, nuclear power is nothing more than a NWO plot to make genocide devices against humanity. They could make not so deadly reactors (Thorium based again) but it wouldn’t create the genocide devices and do other crazy stuff like turning lead briefly into gold.

—On the lead into Gold thing, yes it DOES happen, all the neutron bombardment. Temporary gold and deadly radioactive, but IMO that too has a purpose in secret occult rituals.

“Again, IMO, nuclear power is nothing more than a NWO plot to make genocide devices against humanity.”

Hahahahaha HAHAHAHA

Pay close attention, everyone. This is the sort of person we’ve got rallying against nuclear power. These people are completely disconnected from reality. We cannot let them make any of the important decisions such as whether or not we’re going to use nuclear energy.

BTW – in a gas/coal reaction you get about 40 parts heat to 60 parts energy. That’s a standard energy conversion. Really really expensive outfits work 70/30 in terms of energy conversion to loss due to heat.

But with Nuclear it’s around 1% of the waste heat that’s converted to energy. And those things tend to kick out a mammoth amount of power.

Now, why is it that inefficient?

Because, obviously, the main reason for this is NOT to generate power. That’s the dodge. The lie. The propaganda to fool the sheeple.

Pretty much every commercial reactor is set up to be a “breeder” reactor which enriches nuclear material to create fission level deadlier elements. How do you think they knew Iran was making a nuke? Because they didn’t send the “Waste” back containing the enriched material…

It’s black alchemy on an industrial scale, transmuting matter into unthinkably rare deadly forms for evil. For the mass murder of mankind and global genocide.

And, yes, again, look up a “Thorium” reactor. Lots, LOTS more Thorium out there. It can’t make nuclear bomb level materials. And in a Shit-hits-the-fan moment it’s not quite as bad. But the Globalist Bankers won’t let them even hear about it, they want the genocide factories masked as power plants.

Nuclear power is a grotesque waste meant for human genocide. The “power” part meaning electricity is only to justify it to the public. Oh, yeah, it generates electricity from capturing maybe 1% of the heat… The rest is just “The most expensive way to boil water yet devised by mankind”…

And the end result IS weapons and human genocide.

Again, look up a “Thorium” reactor. Far, far more Thorium available and that can’t be turned into a nuke, which is why it isn’t used. Plenty of disgruntled ex nuclear scientists could make it today, the ones that haven’t died by age, accident or otherwise.

Anon Troll again…
And I’d thought that they’d made it so you had to register here to comment.

Seems all you can do is insult and mock.

I know what I’m talking about, and while yes I do go into and embrace “Conspiracy Theory” there is something to it. We have a source of energy that’s grotesquely expensive and a sinister purpose behind it. Alternative methods are ignored and adding argument to the sinister agenda, safer ways of doing it are down played.

From burning coal/oil we keep about 60 percent of the energy. With Nuclear material only 1-3% is used for energy, the rest is pure heat pushed into the atmosphere, that’s why there are the huge cooling towers.

But all you can do is insult me and … my sexuality … ? Yeah, I’m a heterosexual who likes big boobed women, I’m a real pervert for this site, esp that I’m also old fashioned and anti-PC.

Sex is a horrible plot by humanity to breed more weapons of genocide and tools of the Apocalypse. Just look at what it’s done so far! Look at Hitler! Stalin! Obama! Oh my! Good thing you’re abstaining from it or the world might be even worse.

Sarcasm, it’s there(except the part where I assume he’s a virgin, that’s just wishful thinking). Freaking nutjob.

There is never “extremely safe” locations when it comes to setting up nuclear reactors in any part of the world. Nature doesn’t forgive and we are completely at its mercy. However, we do have a choice to simply not make more nuclear reactors and not have more impending nuclear disasters.

Thorium power plants don’t need to be build in “extremely safe locations”. If the Fukushima plants were decommissioned years ago and thorium plants built in place, that disaster would have never occurred.

“Do the species a favor and do not breed, then again you’re on sancom so thats thankfully probably not going to happen.”

I’m not planning to. Children are expensive and i value my freetime. So way in hell am I willingly going to give either resource to an ungrateful little shit. [Also I probably have a 2 year old illegitimate daughter already.]

If Abe was smart, and he isn’t, he would start talking about Thorium as a nuclear fuel. The designs for a Thorium Fluoride reactor are inherently safer than plutonium or uranium fueled reactors because they don’t operate has super high pressures and don’t require the huge amounts of cooling. It also doesn’t leave nearly as large mess of nuclear waste because Thorium burns much more completely than other fuels. It also cannot be reprocessed into nuclear weapons.

Which brings me to one big reason Abe would want to keep uranium/plutonium fueled reactors. They’ll never admit it but they want the ability to build nuclear weapons as China becomes a bigger threat.

Japan could make its bombs perfectly fine with present reactors. Actually, I don’t even think you’d have problem to make the bomb acquiring plutonium from overseas, economically, if the country was in the atomic club.
More or less what happens in Israel, that almost surely has some warheads, and no reactor on its soil. Actually, Japan would be facing much less external animosity than Israel if they even admited to have nuclear weaponry. Some China saber rattling as always, just that.
It would be hard to convince the population, but it’s probably a matter of time.

On another hand, if Japan geopolitcs don’t go in a really much different direction than USA’s, there is no reason to build bombs, of course, except perhaps nationalism.

If something newer such as molten salt reactors which simply cannot go into runaway and are safer then Carl Sagan petting a baby seal or CANDU reactors which lack a the dangerous high pressure core then yes.

If more of the out dated high pressure BLWRs like in Fukkishima which for some reason did not have a concrete containment dome then no.

Personally I think Japan should pour money into thorium molten salt reactors as this could give it the cheap and safe energy it needs.

Actually I read that one of the pharaonic hi-tech projects that sometime makes the news but you Japan will not really do (maybe it it was the eighties…) was some large orbital arrays of solar panels. I think it wasn’t even in the GW, but that would be a interesting road to take.

Does the reason matter? End result is the same. Nuke plants’ tolerance to human stupidity is too low to be safe. And rest assured that human stupidity will remain, as illustrated by this right wing nut.

“Human stupidity”? Such as an earthquake and a tsunami hitting a plant all at the same time? That thing was an old reactor and STILL it held up without trouble for all these years, up until the wrath of fucking god was released on it. And even then it didn’t immediately melt down.

The only human fucking stupidity lies with the anti-nuclear protestor pitchfork mob.

Within 1 month the incident happened there were already rumors about human factors. I doubted it at first as there were not much proof. But records of discussions reviewed that humans did contributed to the worsening of situation.

I’m all for renewables but right now nuclear is one of the best sources for us. The population of the Earth is growing at an exponentional rate and so is our energy needs. Renewable energy sources can’t cover it and ultimately while creating waste it’s insignificant to the amount of damages/waste from other energy sources. There’s a lot of scaremongering going about with Nuclear but in all the years of operation very few people have actually died due to nuclear accidents. It’s actually pretty safe and with newer reactors being developed to re-use waste from older reactors waste is being kept to a very small amount.

Until storage technology improves you can only have about 25% to 33% of your power grid on renewable energy.
Any more then that it becomes difficult to juggle the loads.
Still that’s a quarter to third of your power so they should not be discounted either.

The problem is not the reactors per se: if there is a country with the necessary know-how and meticolouseness that can make them safe on the Ring of Fire, is Japan. For real.

The problem is letting them go for 30 years with coolment pools on the top of them, and other “lol nobody gives a fuck” mentality. The problem is… japanese people who don’t care about getting CEOs and politican lynched for this shit in governement-assisted projects. I know it seems trolling, but their no-reaction disgusted me, it is not the behaviour of a mature country, even less a democratic one. I’ll drop the bomb: next time, they’ll have had it coming.

(anyhow, I doubt Japan can harness much renovable power. Not that it couldn’t be a new Germany on this and it should as almost every country on earth, but I think the wind/solar/geotermic don’t give them much of an edge. Probably not even tidal power.)

While the renewable energy sources may be safer they simply cannot handle to power demand of modern Japan. Trying to replace the nuclear plants with renewable sources would only force japan to import more oil from Russia, to cover the power burden.

Certainly building new reactors is not a great idea; but giving up nuclear power as a way to appease the liberals, that would be short sighted and a waste of the resources already in place.

They need to get the reactors deemed safe and ready for use up and running before they get too deep in Russian oil.

There is no safe fission based nuclear alternative. Even molten salts reactors (which still use Uranium as a fuel component, don’t say misleading things) produce waste with half lives of several hundred years. Fusion is the only way to go in terms of nuclear energy.

The future will be infinite zero point energy, utilizing the Casimir effect. DARPA is already on it.

Even though U-233 is the actual isotope fissioning, it is derived through neutron capture by Th-232. You only need a seed to start the process, since the neutron balance is positive, meaning more U-233 is created from Th-233 than is required to sustain the reactor.
So for all intents and purposes, thorium is the fuel.

And no thorium molten salt reactors do not produce waste with half-lives in the hundreds of years, unless you meant that it takes a few hundred years for it to be safe, then you’re right.

A thorium burning reactor is vastly more efficient than a reactor running on U-235 or U-238.
In the entire cycle, Th-232 is converted to U-233, which fission 90% of the time. The remaining fuel proceeds upwards, absorbing neutrons till it reach U-235. There it fission 85% of the time, giving a total fission rate of 98.5%, all while still having an excess of neutrons.
The remaining 1.5% will keep absorbing neutrons until next time it can fission at Pu-239, which happens 2/3 of the time.
Luckily for us though, before that it will have transmuted into Np-237, which is chemically separable from U. Np-237 can be used in a fast reactor to completely burn it up, making the entire thorium cycle even more efficient.
Alternatively, it can be left in the reactor for another neutron capture to become Pu-238, which is useless for bombs, and is the plutonium isotope used in RTGs like the one powering Curiosity on Mars. NASA is desperate for more of it.

One the waste side, the thorium cycle only leaves the true waste, the fission products, 83% of which decays to safety within 10 years.
The remaining is Sr-90, Cs-137 and long lived fission products.
Sr-90 and Cs-137 have half-life of about 30 years, meaning they have decayed to safety in about 500 years.
The long lived fission products have half-life measuring in millions of years (exception is Tc-99 at 200k years), and collectively release so little radiation that it’s even below the natural radiation given of by uranium ore.
They are also low-energy beta emitters, meaning external exposure have very little, if any, harmful effect.

There are no fission products between these two groups, which results in waste that is pure fission products being safe in 500 years.

Incorrect molten salt reactors are extremely safe please do research before posting.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory had a molten salt reactor and they shut it down every week end and started it up every Monday.

But yeah, while safer than, they aren’t without dangers. Not to mention, as populated as Japan is, I can’t imagine them being able to (realistically) abandon nuclear power considering the high energy demands. Not to mention, typhoons would likely do a number on wind and solar alternatives.

So, expert on nuke power… How much damage was actually caused by this “nuclear fucking plant”? Still curious, I was under the impression that people died due to the “fucking giant wall of water” and LOSS of “fucking nuclear power”, but I dropped out before I got my phd in making shit up.

anybody ever thought about thermal power plants like for a country with lotsa hotsprings how hard would it be to just dig a hole put a generator in that hole and pump in water … the earth core heats the water that becomes steam that spins the turbine and that creates the power .. Tahh Daaaahhhh Cheap Power without the risk of green radioactive glowing fish .

Depends on how future ones are constructed and maintained. If enough forethought goes into its construction, then a typhoon/tsunami/earthquake wouldn’t be much of an issue. You also have to remember that although human safety and lives are important, there are cost and placement problems with the alternatives. There would be a huge amount of cost for the construction of wind and solar with ongoing costs of constant replacements because they’re destroyed in strong storms. There would be no feasible way for the government to pay for it all and provide enough electricity for the country. Not to mention that once they get destroyed, everybody would be doing without power for much longer periods of time as they’re making the repairs (which could very likely get delayed further because of another storm).

The alternatives are nice, but they aren’t at the point of being the answer.

Laughing at him might be fun and all that, but realistically given the current situation the energy that would have come from nuclear reactors will have to come from coal plants, which do not only dump CO2 into the atmosphere like there is no tomorrow, but also more radioactive material than all nuclear plants combined.

They need the energy NOW. Not 100 years later, not 10 or 20 years later. And even coal may not be an option, unless they can build plants close to a mine. Windmills? (Tens of) thousands of them to replace a single plant… and so on.

The “choice” here is between doing what’s right, and dragging the entire country into a massive financial/energy/environmental crisis just because the misinformed majority tells you to.

Nuclear power is complete crap:
it relies on a very limited ressource, it produces horrible waste that is harmful for thousands of years (and therefore impossible to contain), because of this it’s not “clean” in the slightest (hell, I also wonder how many CO2 is pumped in the atmosphere by mining, transporting and processing the uranium rich soil)and failure can have devastating consequences. Yes, fossil fuel is probably better in comparison, but also too limited.
Every source of energy that is not renewable turns to crap in the long run.

There is no such thing as ‘renewable’ energy. All of the ‘green’ energy being touted is a lie and will never ever work.

You also really don’t have any idea of what you are talking about. Nuclear energy is really the best way to go. After that is oil and coal. Yes all energy sources have some dangers associated with them, so you have to make sure that people like yourself, who know nothing about them, are not put in charge. Because people like you will take bribes to look the other way when corners are cut.

Japan’s problem is simple: without nuclear power they can NOT live the lifestyle they have become accustomed to. They need nuclear power to survive as a country. They just need to build better and safer plants, which they have the technology and know-how to do. All those people who say to get rid of nuclear energy? If they’re serious about it they should first go out there and kill themselves, because without nuclear energy we can’t afford to feed everyone. So they should show their commitment by removing themselves from the pool of consumers.
That or shut up.

I guess you’re consuming power just from renewables, right?
(and I mean for: cooking, heating water, transportation, acquired products, the building of your house, using the internet….)

No? Why? Aren’t the other forms crap?

>>hell, I also wonder how many CO2 is pumped in the atmosphere by mining,

Probably very little in comparision. Even considering that you have tons and tons of not U-238 uranium, the needed mineral is practically not a cost for the power plant in its years of activity.
I’m pretty sure solar panels (which should be mandatory on new houses bot for energy and CO2 goals, at least the thermal ones, don’t get me wrong) have much more of a CO2 cost per kwh produced in their worktime: consider all that friggin’ silicon.

Eventually crap. Right now there is enough oil, uranium and natural gas, but it runs out too quickly. At some point in the near future it will be worthless, because it’s costs will be too high.
We are also running out of other important ressources, like extractable helium, but nobody is talking about this, yet.

(assumption is: how much energy for every person on the planet, every day, for 1000 years, with the reserves “on the table”. The author, an Oxford professor, puts energy consumption of a Briton -typical for an industrialized country- at about 195 kwh per day: total energy, from heating to transport to food and embedded energy in every kind of products)

Putting the end of uranium in the same ballpark of the end of oil, or even coal, is pretty much wrong. To be fair, yeah, fast breeders are probably viable but we don’t know much about ocean mining.

Nuclear power provides a much greater amount of power than renewables will be able to provide for a couple of decades yet, and it is safer and cleaner than most other forms of energy… however in a major war lack of maintainance could be disastrous.

Don’t you think emissions cost lives, except they’re harder to place?

Well, I don’t have time for this, but I recommend ‘Fate of the World’, it gives a very scientific and entertaining account of how to save the world – and one of it’s main focus is managing the energy balance emissions and the economy while working towards renewables and fusion.

It’s not clean, if we consider the nuclear waste. With the current methods, it will exist for eons, there is no safe way of storing this stuff for such a long time.
“Managing the energy balance emissions and the economy while working towards renewables and fusion” seems to imply the abandonment of uranium as a source of energy in the long run.

Nuclear waste amounts mostly to temporary stuff, the high-level and really motherfuckin bad shit is 3% of total waste.
(I guess that with fast breeders it’s less, but who knows?)
Consider this: http://www.whatisnuclear.com/articles/waste_per_person.pdf how much nuclear waste would we have if electric power was totally from nuclear plants, in the USA. Almost 40 g per person per year. 3% of that is 1,2 g. In a century, for 300.000.000 people: 36.000.000.000 or 36,000 tons.
Now, I don’t know the density of this thing, but let’s say it’s like water (almost surely it waaaay more dense): a olympic swimming people contains at least 2,500,000 L, so you can visualize it as not even 15 swimming pools.

The new fast breeder reactors using Thorium are the future. Its still cutting edge because of all the ignorance concerning the safety with people who cant grasp its vastly different than traditional nuclear reactors, but when we start bulding them and improving them I would say they will pave the way for a better safer cleaner way to provide power.

I’m sure, Abe is not talking about any new technology, either.
Right now nuclear energy is mostly produced via uranium, it will take a while, until any realy new stuff catches on.
Ignorance about new energy sources is sure a problem. But imagine some politician announcing the construction of thorium power plants, and assuring that it’s safe. Because these idiots are prone to constant lying in the first place (like about the safety of the old stuff), it’s understandable and very unfortunate that nobody will believe them.
It’s the same with genetic engineered food. There are huge differences between changes made to the plant, some harmless, other may be more critical, but that stuff is impossible to explain to most people, who have become too distrustful of such technologies (and don’t forget that scum of Monsato and the shit they are doing).

I’d love to say nuclear energy is entirely viable, but as soon as humans step into the theory, things start running very differently. Over here in Germany we constantly get alerts because nuclear waste is tossed in random abandoned salt mine shafts, sometimes dangerously close to ground water.
Additionally, we got something of an energy monopoly agreement between a few highly powerful companies here, and politicians are eager to change laws for them so their security checks get less tedious or happen more rarely, allowing them to run with ancient unsafe (and cheap) tech. If you want to sell energy cheaply, you cut corners everywhere and just stop giving a damn at some point.

In theory we could all do it like Sweden, but in praxis this shit’s ridiculous. It’s not even about powerplants blowing up, it’s about the waste. We already got a giant fucking waste problem on this globe that proves we can’t handle it at all, and now it’s getting radioactive on top of things.

Not sure if they really banned or it was more a “we’ll ban them surely” thing.

Anyway Germany has 25% of its electricity from renewables, which is pretty damn amazing for a northern country without much of a coastline or sismic activity.
The question is: is the sector saturated or they could make it grow still more? Considering a +5% in the last year, I’d say there is much room to do that.

Nuclear power is safe when done properly and most people were astounded by that this nuclear plant survived an earthquake and tsunami, the first multiple times more powerful than the plant was designed for and the second which had never even been thought of happening.

And while you’re trying to convince people that, the stock market is crashing, your retirement evaporates, and your real estate near that “safe” nuclear plant suddenly worth less than the cost of building a house on, which nobody will come rent.

This is along the lines of “if everybody just be nice, we’ll have world peace.”

“Everyone” won’t think the way you want them to, even if you think you’re right and they’re wrong. Stop burying your head in the sand.

Nuclear power is the safest form of non-renewable energy ever invented. Why, oh why do people always seem to forget that fossil fuels kill hundreds of thousands of people every year from pollution and various respiratory diseases? Just Google it if you don’t believe me. And renewables can be deadly too – over a quarter of a million people lost their lives in China in 1975 after a series of hydroelectric dam failures.

People should adopt my mindset.. If you don’t know how it works, don’t be scared of it! 😀

Well, I’ve never understood what’s so bad about nuclear power, it’s efficient and isn’t really that dangerous if all safety protocols are held… and not built a few inches away from the ocean.
I think it’s better to let people who know what they’re doing do their stuff, and not interfere when one has no clue about things.

All protocols held? If you read the Euro report after Fukushima review you will find out that most of the Europe nuclear plants will need to upgrade. In fact, some plants’ upgrade requirements were posted after Chernobyl incidents but they were never implemented.

Alternatives have their own dividends and costs. There is a factor of long term benefit versus short term cost.

However, current publicly shown technology is not so economical to assure even that level of economic returns in the near future. Not to mention, powering a developed nation purely from renewable energy is incredibly uneconomical and would require tremendous amount of capital and government investment that a nation with 234% GDP debt cannot possibly afford, even if it is a portion of their total power consumption.

The reason for many nations to still rely on coal and oil, and nuclear is not because they cannot build renewable power plants – it is because economically speaking ‘cleaner’ fossil fuel plants and nuclear plants are better bang for the buck. Currently, the renewable energies in most developed nations are more or less ‘test’ cases deployed to see how reliable and economical they are, and how they can be made so through technological advancement based on those real life test results.

Also, there is a political consideration to this issue. Energy is byword for ‘lifeblood’ of modern civilization, and thus intrinsically connected to geo politics at fundamental level. To control petroleum is part of the game being played to leverage influence over certain political situations across the world, and same goes for uranium. This means that until those resources are near depletion, and as long as they remain economical and generate so much energy for relatively manageable and sustainable environmental cost, world would be relying on them for the foreseeable future. Just developing new technology would not get anyone out of this power play – in fact, while you dick around with expensive toys, other nations will jump at the vacated spot and be able to power themselves so much cheaper and thus gain greater political leverage at your expense. Also, due to the nature of technology, your painfully innovated advancements can easily be taken over by other nations for way cheaper costs and time, as US have learned and is now taking measures against.

My opinion is that US and other nations have already seen to developing a certain degree of economically viable renewable energies, but are holding their cards close to whip it out at the right moment in order to gain maximum political clout while managing non-renewable sources the best they can environmentally to the benefit of the people. Anyone who doubts this needs to only check some of the statistics and environmental data from 50 years ago compared to today. We are for the most part at sustainable level environmentally, something those tree-hugging environmentalists ignore.

For people to blame this on ‘lobby’ and such is too short-sighted. They need to understand that technology of this type (one linked not just to energy power and geopolitics) are not perfectly refined or developed overnight due to need for perfection stemming from various national implications, and those who HAVE developed such technology must by necessity hold their own innovations close in order to best offer their citizens greatest economical, social, and political clout domestically as well as internationally. Best example of this is how US handled the shale oil/gas tech until now when oil reserve trend in the middle east is generally in a downward spiral. You have to know when to whip out the good cards at the right time, instead of being like japan and just spewing out your ‘achievements’ left and right while racking up 234% debt and constantly being in recessions for the last 23 years, only to discover that other nations have already developed their own technology for which japanese tech is but a foot note compared to their own innovations – afterall, critical supercomputers and most essential technologies in government in US are innovated (note: innovated) here, sometimes in europe, but not in japan. To compare commercial electronics and equate that with true technological innovations is a folly. As far as I know, Packet switch tech, arpanet, and GPS, etc etc of which we owe a great deal of revolutionary progress originated first from US defense and government organizations.

So what you are saying is that we should forget about using renewable energy now, and keep fucking with the environment until it’s bad enough?

Then what? One country has good renewable tech, the other doesn’t, and that is good, you say? So one country will provide well-being for its citizens and “gain political advantage” right in time, at the expense of most of mankind?

If we have a situation where most people will get the short end of the stick, that might just be you. Do you realise that? Or you think the USA is an economy that won’t ever fall?

A country is huge. Green energy can be used at various spots to reduce the demand. It’s the general trend and is especially important in areas having high earthquake risk. Even the US is moving towards it. The goal is not to eliminate whatever type of energy but to choose the best within a defined area, not only considering the cost.

If you took inflation into account, those numbers are mostly negative, since dollar inflation out-paces their growth by large. Point is not nominal growth, but how it is measured against the dollar. Even when there is growth, it is negated by extremely aging population and shrinking workforce. Where as for US, the lost ground is quickly regained and expansion and recession are healthily cyclical, as is expected of market economy. We were also due another big recession/depression by now, and financial crisis was by comparison moderate and a good wake up call for many people. It was severe, but not as unmanageable or impossible. US had the foundation and infrastructure in place to weather the storm. Unfortunately for our European friends, they did not. But I am sure US can help out in ways you cannot since security and prosperity of Europe is tied to security and economic benefits of US. Now if only europe would get its act together and stop being so damn bitchy towards us we might just be friendlier.

Also, you did take my statement about shale oil the wrong way. It is but a portion of what the influence of US can reach, and all the taxes and revenues can help further renewable and economical resources in the future. We are now providing those resources to select allies and nations who can make a fair deal with us. Also when importing oil we pay fair dollars for those resources, but apparently many oil exporting nations do not like to share their wealth with the nation but horde it all to their own private accounts.

The best is a change both in new forms of energy, and devices with low power consumption …….
For example leds this more than proven that LEDs have very low consumption so why not give starting cheapen its cost and replace the bulbs worldwide, which in some places is still incandescent (filament)?
Coal plants pollute the environment and the generated heat brings up global warming.

One idea nuclear power stations submerged in locations where less affect the environment and increase safety population.

Yes the cost would be astronomical and perhaps created mutants marine (Godziraaa..) 😛

The truth is that the world is getting smaller and the only hope would be the Space!!
(thank you USA for close to NASA and leave in the hands of small corporations will invest in only rides for millionaires trough atmosphere ………)

Did you miss the whole point about ‘sustainable’ environment development? Or are you so coked up in ‘evil factory’ vs. ‘pure and awesome trees’ childish bull shit that you can’t see reality?

People have learned that it is not only miserable but also extremely UNECONOMICAL in the long run to ruin the environment for a short term gain. You can’t deplete the soil for a good haul one year and hope to live off that land for too long. That means that industry/energy and environment actually go hand in hand. Except for fucktarded nations like china, developed nations have learned this lesson.

You also did not read about how tech innovations work, and are too narrow-minded with persecution complex to imagine any thing other than a zero-sum game. I never said the pie could not be enlarged, amusing how you jumped to conclusions based on infantile wailing about ‘you tooook our stuuuufff’.
US economy is resilient enough to withstand direct depression and recessions as it has been proven again and again. I cannot say the same for multiple nations whose corruption alone negates much of their economic successes for the public.

Everyone gets a turn getting the short end, but there is a plenty of difference between those grabbing them. Issue is political and economical, and unfortunately for you, US has great deal of power in both areas. Don’t worry, we won’t be as stingy or ungenerous as if china or middle east was reigning as #1 super power in the world.

Bitching about US is one sure sign the writer is a soft ass fuck who never lived through some of the harshest times in recent human history. Comparing US faults to others is like comparing petty speeding driver to a homicidal maniac on a bull dozer razing 12 houses and killing 200 people in the process. Get some perspective under your belt then open your mouth about world affairs.

Green energy is not feasible. You can’t run an industrial society on it. It’s either nuclear, coal, or back to the bronze age.
If you want us to go with renewable, you can forget about TVs, computers, cars, refrigerators, air conditioning, and pretty much any modern convenience you can think of.

Japanese was not in recession for 23 years. In fact, it was growing even in most partsY/&§
of the nienties.
Difference is slower growth.

And also, please, it’s not a problem of technology. Tech does go on on solar as much as nuclear (heck, probably nuclear isn’t so good because of lesser and older plants). Simple truth is… some power is not so efficient as others, in terms of bucks per wh (and bucks eventually mean, for example, acres of land covered in solar panels. Desert is good for this not only because of solar irradiation, but because it’s otherwise useless land. And… there are not many nations with enough desert to spare, especially rich countries).

Nowdays USA seem to be really ready to go on shale gas (oil tech goes on as well), and I don’t think much tears will be shed in Washington when they’ll not need to give much of a fuck about some infamous oil-exporting countries. It’s not a “last resort” card, Saudi Arabia isn’t depleted at all.

Bitch please. Contracting GDP and ping pong growth IS recession. Graph doesn’t have to sink like a rock in order for the economy to be that bad. Did you even check whether your data is inflation adjusted? Or know that upward trend is not indicative of overall picture? “Constantly in recession for the 23 years”. Check your facts about their GDP growths each year. Decreasing total GDP is recession, and there have been more than few for japan, where as for US except for the recent crisis, was never a ping pong economy, but rather cyclical with 16 or 20 something year period.

Please, learn your facts. Economical factor is part of the technical problem. When technology is such that returns are not worth the cost, then technical and economical problems go hand in hand. Saudi Arabia is not as rich in oil as it was before, and that is a fact. In fact, they are pumping more water and chemicals into the sand just to scrape up some more out of rapidly depleting reserves, compared to other places in the world where oil is booming. There is a growing evidence many OPEC nations have over inflated their oil reserve estimate, with some by as much as 200% to 400% of their actual reserves.

Who said it was ‘last resort’ for US to tap the shale oil. It is only another useful card in the long line of far-seeing policies that are quietly being implemented by wise and silent functionaries as geo politics follow a predictable path, at least in terms of energy consumption. As far as I know, with US controlling 50 to possibly 73% of the entire world’s shale oil reserves (reserves in china have not been proven to be either economical or as plentiful), power dynamic of geo politics is about to change a bit.

Should shale oil run out, we always have technological advancement we can unveil at the right moment. Not too many were sure whether we could use shale tech either and many experts from japan and other countries tried to call US bluff on shale oil. They are feeling pretty cold at the moment 🙂

We’ll just have to wait.
There’s something that always make supply and demand meet, and that’s the price. We’ll probably still have oil in 200 years, but it’ll just be not affordable. The Energy Return on Invested (EROI) for Oil is declining rapidly.

The biggest problem for renewable energy today especially for mobile use, is buffering.

First Geothermal but it comes at the price of more small under 4.0 earth quakes if implemented wrong.
Second reopen the mines on Hashima island or buy coal from Australia.
But coal is dirty.

The third is not really an option is Natural gas but this is only cost effective if you’re sitting on a natural gas reserve or close enugh to use a pipeline.
If gas has to be shipped in it becomes very expensive so much so you might as well go with renewables and deal with the storage problem.

there is if you look around a bit more deeper..Its a type of technology that is already enough to make Coal,Nuclear, Oil,etc obsolete.. i’m not talking about Green technology crap that you hear in the news.

WTF?! Wow, please send your study results to the IEC. These radiation resistant humans are a major evolutionary step! Why do people think stuff like this factual?
Maybe the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors can get some good paying jobs cleaning up Fukushima.

Fuck that, imagine all the traffic… now maybe if I had a parking garage…
Anyways it being nuclear power and the US government being more and more bold about abusing power they would just take my land and give me like 2 bucks in return.

Well, even nuclear plants made in the 70s and 80s still give off less radiation than living beside a coal power plant within several miles (somthing all the “clean coal” wackjobs never talk about). If he was going to build using the newest tech I certanly wouldnt mind living near it since its very safe.

Fukushima failed because those bastards that were supposed to start the emergency pumps ran the fuck away. afterwards it was too late and hydrogen explosions made some nice leaks so they could easily get close.

Nuclear reactors are perfectly safe, the one in Chernobyl failed because the USSR built it using shoddy parts. The communists did not have the funding to build a reliable plant. And Fukushima failed because the quake cut off coolant to the reactor core. Wrong location for a uranium power plant. If it were a thorium power plant, the plant simply would have gone offline. So in the end, the faults lie with cost & arrogance.

It really depends on the design not all reactors are equal when it comes to safety.

A CANDU or LFTR is much safer then a BLWR reactor.
Fukkushima also lack a key safety feature any boiling light water reactor should have, a concrete containment dome.
This is why 3 mile Island’s partial meltdown did not harm anyone or the surrounding environment.
Other design flaws the location and having the backup generators in the basement.

Wow. A politician with a brain and some actual knowledge about nuclear power. I’m glad to see one higher up noticing that a reactor first activated in 1971 having a meltdown after being hit with one of the biggest earthquakes in history and a tsunami isn’t indicative of the current state of nuclear safety technology.

Meanwhile Germany prepares a law that will enable the government to pay companies to shut down their production immediately after an alert that energy consumption is too high for their new “green” energy supply. Also, electricity costs rise significantly, power lines are unstable, Germany even destabilizes Poland’s energy lines by pumping the excess energy they can’t deal with at times there. That’s how economic and reliable green energy is.

Nuclear power FTW! Build more reactors using the latest technology and you’ll be safe.

the people against nuclear power are dumbshits. The reason why the reactor leaked was because the power authority hid all the flaws. It wasn’t the nuclear power that was the problem, its the fact that Japan has a love affair with shoddy worksmanship and hiding porblems. They had yakuza to build and maintain the reactor, how stupid was that?

Seriously, a generation 3/generation 4 power plant is almost impossible to breach ,produces a fraction of the pollution and provides more power consistently. Coal plants output even more radiation than a fully operational nuclear plant would ever release in its lifetime.

Nukes are ridiculously bad. Not only down it pollute to make the reactors. When it goes online radioactive material does leak into the Environment. Also Nuclear energy is not clean at all it has to be maintained which cost money bet those cronies won’t spent a dime to do. Mean while it will leak more and more radioactive material in the eco system.

Radiation may last for hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Those peice of land will no longer be useful for any living cells unless those cells likes destorying its own DNA.

END GAME is there will be less and less land for people/nature the material also moves around so you may go extinct before you lose all those lands. Don’t worry it will renew and be okay in maybe next millions of years just that the tenants won’t be human.

or they hire me to solve their stupid mess. which is simple equalation. If you can’t clean it don’t use it.

whoever got to you first and “informed you” as to the evils of the nuclear power plant was mistaken. nuclear power is far cleaner and safer than you are presently aware of, and staggeringly so when compared to the countless coal plants in operation throughout the world, both in cancer/respiratory illness rates in cities, and environmental damage/pollution. the only thing scary about nuclear power is the frightening lack of modern nuke plants. those in operation date back decades; modern plants would be far safer and more efficient yet are never constructed, likely due to misinformation and fear.

Nuclear energy is so fucking dangerous, that it should be abandoned. yeah i understand the economic deal, but the consequences for any mistake done with a
nuclear reactor are tremendous to say the least, but the worst part is how it leaves everything useless for what little time whe still have on earth. which is why an old
geek like Abe couldn’t care less for the long run. who know maybe he is already illed with cancer and with little time left.

HAHA the fuck you talking about. GE had better reactors, you japs bought blueprints for ones that could only withstand 6m of tsunami. You get what you paid for. Half of the reactors were japanese made, and they were the ones who blew up first.

Reactors don’t blow up unless people in charge screw up. You japs were in charge for that one.

Earth’s Natural Nuclear Reactor Cause Volcano Explosion, Earthquake, Tsunamis !
The are no other natural forces in earth that can cause earthquake other than Nuclear !
We must Shut Down Earth’s Natural Nuclear Reactor !

Sorry, but for anyone who laughs at people who scoff at evolution or global warming to engage in anti-nuclear hysteria is pretty awesomely ridiculous. Wanna know the real story here? Fukushima got hit with a 9.0 earthquake and a once-in-a-a-thousand-year tsunami and *still* didn’t fail bad enough to cause a single casualty. Not one. The truth is, there would have been more casualties if an apartment block in that spot instead of a nuclear reactor. And while we’re at it, there weren’t any casualties from Three Mile Island, ether. The truth of the last 70 years of civilian nuclear power is that as long as you’re not using creaky Soviet-built crap, it’s perfectly safe even in the worst of circumstances. That’s the truth based on facts, reason, and logic, but some people prefer breathless scares instead.

Radiation exposure doesn’t kill you outright. You wake up one day 10 or so years down the line and find out you have cancer, or your kidneys or liver or some other part of your body just doesn’t work right anymore. Of course, during those years, you probably took up smoking, drinking, or using some other substance and everyone tells you that’s the cause. But deep down, you know it’s the radiation from that nuclear plant accident years ago. The accident no one died in.

-.- Look up how radiation works… it’s not accumulative exposure that does it. It’s God…

No, really if you particle hits you be it an alpha, gamma, neutron, etc it’s going to affect the cell it hits. The possible outcomes are as follows: Nothing happens (ever), The cell gets damaged and dies, the cells gets damaged and produces normal cells later on, or the part that no one wants the cell gets damaged and produces more damaged cells and keeps going on(cancer). It’s all chance 🙂 Kinda like buying lotto tickets.

Governments are criminals..
We already have dozens of energy technology (google free energy,geothermal,etc) you can even collect energy from waves but they still insist on using risky nuclear energy.. just to boil water to generate electricity..